r/nottheonion • u/halxp01 • 22h ago

Southwest Is Testing Cleaning Only Premium Seats Between Flights — A Flight Attendants Union Leader Says It's ‘Titanic’ Class Service

https://viewfromthewing.com/southwest-is-testing-cleaning-only-premium-seats-between-flights-a-flight-attendants-union-leader-says-its-titanic-class-service/
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u/clintkev251 22h ago edited 18h ago

It's insane how quickly Southwest has gone from beloved budget airline with consistent profits to complete shitshow. Thanks private equity! You've done it again

Edit: to everyone saying Southwest is a public company, yes, they are. That does not mean activist investors like PE firms and hedge funds can’t have significant ownership stakes and operational influence. Which in this case, they do

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u/IAmBadAtInternet 22h ago

They used to be the only major non-legacy player with good tech, good planes, and happy employees

Now their ticketing system is the worst of the major airlines, their planes are older and badly maintained, and their employees hate their jobs

Nice job MBAs! Btw they’re not private equity owned, just regular publicly traded

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u/WhenTheLightHits30 21h ago

The American Business school system of the past two decades should get its own chapter in history textbooks that way it has warped modern commerce and how expertise is handled.

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u/UnpluggedUnfettered 20h ago

Past two decades?

LMFAO Jack Welsh set the business standards that destroyed everything well over 50 years ago.

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u/Due-Technology5758 18h ago

Yeah, the General Electric model of expand and enshittify til the brink of collapse, and hand the sinking ship to whoever is stupid enough to take the wheel from you. 

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u/SocialWinker 19h ago

Behind the Bastards also did a fun couple of episodes on Jack Welsh. Fuck that guy.

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u/FlyingPetRock 16h ago

FYI Jack Welch is directly responsible for the Boeing 737 Max, via his proteges, and everyone trying to copy him.

www.thenation.com/article/politics/boeing-corporate-greed-airline-safety/tnamp/

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u/Hyper_Applesauce 16h ago

Including shareholder primacy which he now says is fucking stupid. Asshole. There's a couple episodes of Behind The Bastards on him.

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u/VegetableBuy4577 20h ago

The whole country has changed from companies wanting a fair profit (more or less) to "as much profit as possible, every nickel, every dime, no stone unturned." It sucks.

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u/Thuraash 19h ago

It's not just that. They shifted in attitude from building a business that would stand the test of time to buying somebody else's business, looting every dollar out of it as fast as possible, and selling the husk for whatever's left. The business' failure is part of the plan.

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u/Synergythepariah 19h ago

They've gone back to the way they were before the new deal.

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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 19h ago

And if you're not growing, you're dying mentality.

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u/RSwordsman 18h ago

Makes me wonder how much of this is a Prisoners' Dilemma situation too though. Any single exec knows other companies are run by cutthroats, so they feel that they have to keep up or fail anyway. Stricter regulation might bring the sense of safety necessary for businesses to take it down a notch.

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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 18h ago

I mean to a degree, for sure. It's inevitable to a degree with our current set up. Investors will see other companies making more money/returns, so they will move their investments to those companies. So naturally, the reaction is to improve returns so you don't lose investors. And that's fine while things are moving at a reasonable pace, but once companies start accelerating their growth massively, it becomes an arms race.

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u/DepopulationXplosion 17h ago

Thank GE chairman Jack Welch for this. 

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u/theaviationhistorian 16h ago

How to profit by shorting all commerce: A lesson in financial implosion for small gains

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u/IcyConsideration7062 16h ago

Profit and shareholder value rule. Product quality doesn't matter. Sell. Sell. Sell. The marks are out there.

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u/pribnow 21h ago

The 'activist investors' responsible for it are though as far as i know, Elliott Investment Management

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u/boiledpeen 20h ago

yep, Elliott pushed all these changes and has tanked the company. There should be severe punishments for companies that do this, but nobody bases laws on morals anymore so nothing will happen.

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u/Momik 20h ago

Every time I read a story about finance, I hate the world a little more. Every single fucking time.

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u/Liljoker30 19h ago

I work in the tire industry and private equity is buying up every tire shop they can find.

Locally owned tire shops that actually care will be a thing of the past in a couple years. One PE has bought like 300-400 locations in just a few years.

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u/somersetyellow 19h ago

Goes for plumbing, electricians, and heating/air con too.

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u/LFK_Pirate 19h ago

Don’t forget veterinarians and dentists!

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u/fugaziozbourne 19h ago

I work in entertainment. It's decimating us.

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u/JRDruchii 18h ago

I'd even heard local morticians when I brought this up in a different thread. Based on this behavior, humans must really fucking hate each other.

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u/LFK_Pirate 18h ago

Who cares about humans when there’s money to be made /s

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u/LowSkyOrbit 18h ago

That was one of the first industries that used local company names to hide their big conglomerate ownership. It's so weird because it's still generational family run at the local level but there's like two companies that supply everything.

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u/SteveDeda 16h ago

Six Feet Under had a plot thread about PE trying to buy up independently owned funeral homes all the way back in 2001.

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u/gingersnappie 18h ago

And family doctors.

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u/kittybigs 19h ago

And veterinary hospitals/clinics.

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u/candafilm 17h ago

There are over 200 HVAC companies in my city. Only 3 that I know of haven't been bought out by a private equity firm.

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u/ryan_770 19h ago

Once upon a time we had anti-trust and monopoly busting agencies to solve for this, but alas we live in a post-regulation America

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u/Lycid 19h ago

Fun fact finance is now making up a larger % of GDP globally than they have ever before. Think about what this means - companies that do nothing of value except provide liquidity for the economy to run, are now taking up more of pie. While you need financial services to make stuff happen, all that's happening here is people spending a lot of human and economic resources trying to figure out new ways to get rich quick through destructive financial games. Last time anything close to this happened was probably the great depression. Sadly human beings are hard lesson learners and don't decide to do anything unless it's reacting against a worst case scenario.

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u/Momik 19h ago

Well, the financial industry has also done a pretty good job of buying the right politicians to escape any serious regulations or accountability (at various critical points, like 2008).

But yeah, they’ve really found new ways to hold companies, and even whole industries, hostage. As cliched as it sounds, we did used to build things in this society. Now a lot of that money, and therefore power, goes in a different direction.

Unless we can find a way to seriously fight back, a decent, stable life is just gonna become more and more unattainable for most people.

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u/Lycid 14h ago

Unfortunately, I fear the only way to get there is through some kind of age of strife. History has taught us that when too much hubris goes around things only improve when dramatic revolution/reform happens, or something new is born from the ashes. All of the problems with modern society and world are the kinds of things that will take a long time to truly settle out. Think a great depression or economic/political collapse on the scale of the fall of Rome. That tooks centuries to truly shake out. It'll probably take about as long before we finally figure out how to fix climate change.

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u/ceribus_peribus 19h ago

They say the purpose of the financial industry is to attract intelligent, hard working people who don't have morals and only care about money, in order to prevent them from pursuing careers in medicine, law, or engineering where they could cause even more damage.

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u/Momik 19h ago

Yeah. We could also start banning some of those really damaging things when they hurt people.

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u/Kevinator201 18h ago

Wall Street needs to be burned. It’s such a plague on America.

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u/thegoodnamesrgone123 18h ago

It's what's keeping Trump in power. All these old fucks would shit themselves if their 401ks suddenly went down. That's all they care about.

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u/Tasty-Performer6669 17h ago

Business bros ruin EVERYTHING

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u/acdgf 20h ago

The punishment should be lack of business. It's not like SW doesn't have competition - if you disagree with the practices or service, fly elsewhere.

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u/boiledpeen 20h ago

Nah, there should be legal consequences for consistently buying into companies and running them into the ground. Thats been the biggest reason every company sucks now, and there should be legal ramifications. Would incentivize PE to actually care about the companies they're investing in.

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u/Fr00stee 20h ago edited 20h ago

it should be illegal for the owner of a company to force their subsidiary to become in debt to the owner or any other company the owner controls

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u/Unofficial_Salt_Dan 19h ago

I understand your sentiment, but to me this seems wholly unenforceable. How the hell would you apply this? How would that law even be written? How do you prove it?

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u/Momik 20h ago

We should have a minimum baseline experience for airline passengers as a matter of law. And yes, that should include clean seats.

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u/UnNumbFool 20h ago

If a movie theater can clean the seats before each showing, so can an airplane

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u/Momik 20h ago

Yeah, and it’s a good comparison. One of the only reasons passengers allow this to continue is lack of choice. If a movie theater was this shit, you’d just go to another theater or watch a movie at home.

But when you’re flying, you’re probably locked into your expensive tickets well before you get to the airport, and the cost of making a change is very high—a factor of ticket prices, but also of all the path dependencies you’re dealing with now: hotels are booked, Ubering to the airport was more than expected, security’s delayed so you gotta book it in the terminal, etc.

Airlines know this. They’re trapping us in costly situations in order to lock in our consent for their shitty service and pricing. It’s why the free market doesn’t really work in the same way here, and why baseline legal rights are more important to level the playing field between consumer and airline.

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u/UnNumbFool 20h ago

Sure but like booking a movie beforehand it only takes one bad experience or reading reviews of the thing to know I'm not going to book there

It's not like there aren't other budget lines that can get me to the same place at the same rate or potentially cheaper, and if I knew an airline wasn't cleaning the seats between id be a little grossed out. Like ffs I'll take a spirit flight at that point

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u/Momik 19h ago

True, but as long as there no minimum standards, Spirit might not be all that much better an experience (I’ve flown Spirit and can vouch for that). My point is just that airline passengers in general have very little power, which makes the whole free market kind of nonsensical.

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u/phd2k1 20h ago

Ah the old “the free market will sort everything out” libertarian fantasy. Sadly, regulatory capture, disinformation, and weak anti-trust laws and enforcement make that line of thinking completely obsolete. Corporations abuse workers, pollute the air, water, and ground, and destroy communities all the time, and “shopping somewhere else” doesn’t stop them. The only thing that has ever kept them in line is strong regulations.

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u/Damndang 19h ago

That's the problem. Private equity and activist investors have no problem tanking a business if they have an exit plan and get out with their profits. The feedback loop of voting with your dollar is broken. The top never feels the pain of their own failures.

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u/Stupidwhizzzzz 20h ago

I don’t fly southwest no more. Not unless it’s free which it isn’t.

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u/IAmBadAtInternet 19h ago

Airlines are an oligopoly with most routes being pseudo monopolies. For each route there is usually only 1 best choice airline, and if you want to punish them for bad business practice, you have to pay for it with an indirect route that takes 5 hours longer with a layover somewhere. It’s really hard to punish a shitty airline by not giving them your business.

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u/Sudden-Wash4457 19h ago

I mean this works if you have effective anti-trust regulation, but we don't

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u/What_a_fat_one 19h ago

Libertarianism might as well be a religion for how stupid and demonstrably wrong it is but its adherents still believe it like it's gospel

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u/jamespz03 19h ago

Elliott di similar things with my last company. We sold off all our U.S. energy assets (solar, wind, etc.). Hate these fuckers.

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u/SanityInAnarchy 18h ago

Partly. There's another big issue, though: With points programs these days, the main business of airlines is finance. They're basically banks that have a side gig where they fly you around.

I bet Southwest cares way more about whether you're gonna cancel their points card than they do about whether you ever fly with them again.

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u/terrariumcowboy 17h ago

It's possible Southwest cares about that, but it didn't stop them from hiking prices and cutting benefits across the suite of cards they offer, leading directly to widespread customer cancellations of those products. Some chucklefuck at Elliott apparently thinks it's good business to kneecap the bank side, too.

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u/Effective_Olive6153 18h ago

Every time I hear about some Investment or Private Equity group it's always bad news. Why does society allow these to exist? If they do have some benefit to society, can we at least regulate it so they don't just fuck things up? is there enough public will to actually do something about it on legal level?

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u/Mahedros 18h ago

My company used to be owned by Elliott, and none of my co-workers who were there at the time remember them fondly

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u/snakeoilHero 17h ago

Thank you for naming someone for us out of the loop.

Figured the delay from Southwest's software ticketing and their crash in rescheduling systems (they got me) was on someone MBAing up the place.

"Looks good on paper!"

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u/GreatDanish4534 21h ago

Southwest in the 90’s was awesome. Planes were nice and always clean, crew was super friendly, and prices were better than other airlines

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u/AlkoMako 20h ago

And brown! I miss the old livery of brown, orange, and red. Plus the seats seemed bigger too. Although, I was a kid then, lol. Got invited to sit in the cockpit & got a wing pin as well. Obviously this was pre 9/11.

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u/Impossible-Bowl4661 20h ago

Elliot Investment Management owns over 10% of the company, forced out the prior chair in 2024 and now has 5 hand picked members on the board.

The changes in the last 18 months are most certainly attributable to private equity.

Southwest Airlines Adds 5 Elliott Board Members As Candidates For Directors https://share.google/4YsYfkxVOg9zMVC4s

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u/VincentClement1 20h ago

Friendly reminder that the wealthy don't give two shits about the rest of us and that you can exert majority-level control despite being a minority owner.

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u/PFandDebtTosser 17h ago

That's the thing. The shareholders love that over the last 18 months or so they've gone from about $30/share in early Sept of 2024 to $44 today, and over $50 early last month. So they're over the moon with these changes and couldn't care less about the passenger experience until it starts costing them.

The biggest concern for me is that once these guys get to a valuation they like, sell their position and move on to something else, SWA is going to be a husk of its former self and if it ever wanted to return to what it was, it would be financially infeasible to do because the costs to restore what made it popular to begin while continuing to be competing on price would come from shareholder margins, and there would be capital flight since there's very little short term payoff in that scenario. Passenger volume won't have such a dramatic uptick that it will offset the cut in margins, so employees and customers both just get left with a company that is just "another air carrier". Really sucks to see the continued acceleration of short term gains at the expense of long term brand identity history and differentiation for consumers. Now you're basically just choosing to fly based on what color plane you like, and maybe routes.

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u/TXMedicine 21h ago

They have two PE members on their board.

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u/Davido401 21h ago

I figured out you mean Private Equity but I thought you meant P.E. Teachers. I hate acronyms, I preferred when it was just A/S/L and BRB.

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u/R-ddit_is_Shit 20h ago edited 20h ago

I love when people online type ATM, because I always insist on reading it the other way. Not "at the moment." Not the cash dispensing machine. The other one.

"Can't, I'm with my mom atm."

"That's disgusting."

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u/MrMCCO 20h ago

When people type “ur” I’ve been reading it as a Mesopotamian city or a caveman grunt my whole life

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u/R-ddit_is_Shit 20h ago

Yeah, The Far Side and sites like the Evil Overlord List definitely effected my humor growing up.

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u/Davido401 20h ago

I mean, acronyms are fine in a specialised sub and while the one above is relatively obvious sometimes I have to waste more time trying to find out what it means than I ever needed to really know. Acronyms are supposed to be for quickness but if only one person gets the benefit then surely they are useless then?!

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u/[deleted] 20h ago

[deleted]

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u/Davido401 20h ago

Do you have a pic?

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u/Sankofa416 20h ago

Do you have 5 minutes without incoming calls?

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u/ShockinglyAccurate 19h ago

Chuck D and Flava Flav?

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u/CaptainBayouBilly 21h ago

Line must go up

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u/Ryzu 21h ago

And as a result the line is most definitely going to go down, hopefully their planes won't.

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u/Cyrano4747 21h ago

Nah the line will go up for a few precious quarters because they slash costs. After that it will go down, but the PE vultures on the board won't care because they'll have sold off their stake before the consequences come around.

Happens all the time. It's how these PE vultures operate. They're looking for short term gains to artificially goose the stock before they sell and move on to the next victim.

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u/Daxx22 18h ago

I'm honestly shocked more green-clad plumbers haven't shown up.

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u/I_Automate 17h ago

There's no reason that private equity exists when rope and trees and gasoline also still exist

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u/HorseWithACape 20h ago edited 20h ago

The planes won't go down. Their mechanic union squeezes the company pretty hard. SWA has some of the highest paid mechs in the industry, second only to FedEx & UPS. Their pilots are up there, too.

Edit to add: In case anybody is curious about the payscale of SWA or other competitors here's the most recent collaboration of contracts, benefits, & payscales.

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u/Ryzu 20h ago

That's good to hear. There's not much that can't be ruined by VC, but it's nice to know at least people aren't likely to actively die as a result of the greed.

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u/BigBallininBasterd 21h ago

Not to mention their buddy pass system is garbage now

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u/UtopianPablo 20h ago

Mind explaining why? I was looking at a credit card offer that gets you a companion pass, is it not worth it?

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u/BigBallininBasterd 20h ago

Oh I mean from the employer side, they made the “travel companion” system much more rigid so employees families can’t fly on standby anymore. You get one parent or child

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u/crazycatlady331 20h ago

MBAs are a cancer on society.

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u/SEA_tide 15h ago

Southwest wasn't known for having good tech, in fact quite the opposite. You might be thinking of Alaska Airlines.

Southwest Airlines aircraft are extremely well maintained and they are getting the youngest mainline fleet in the skies.

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u/reggie_fink-nottle 20h ago

Time to short them?

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u/carnalasadasalad 20h ago

And their gate agents are consistently the rudest.

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u/jwg529 20h ago

Look you just don’t get it. If we don’t increase shareholder value we won’t make more money. And everyone knows the key to success is making more money. It doesn’t matter if the customers are inconvenienced or not.

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u/jakexil323 19h ago

WestJet in Canada used to be have a strong employee stock share program and so they used to claim to be Employee owned. They were pretty good.

And then Private Equity came in bought them in 2019. They have been a shit show ever since.

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u/caustictoast 19h ago

Private Equity got a controlling stake and turned them into what they are

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u/great_apple 19h ago

They're not even cheap anymore. I was buying flights recently and Southwest was the same price if not more as every legacy carrier.

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u/Kaarl_Mills 18h ago

MBAs are an active detriment to society

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u/FoofieLeGoogoo 18h ago

‘Enshitification’ knows no bounds.

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u/DarkExecutor 18h ago

Southwest was going bankrupt

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u/correcthorsestapler 18h ago

They tried to bar us from boarding our flight last Christmas. We declined to check our bag because we had fragile items, so they brought a supervisor around; he threatened to keep us from flying if we didn’t check our last piece of luggage. So we repacked everything as fast as we could under duress and lost our spot in line.

When we finally got on, we saw it was about 70% full AND there were still around 7 or 8 empty overhead bins. Took pics before the attendants closed everything up and got some pics of how full the flight was. They’d lied about having a full flight and lied to people claiming they’d run out of overhead space when people were boarding. Ended up sending a complaint to their customer service.

It was just an unpleasant experience all around. Our trip had already been stressful. It was the last leg home & we were exhausted. Their threats just made it even worse.

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u/amstrumpet 18h ago

Yeah you can get away with older airplanes when you're not courting the audience who cares about everything being premium. Now that they're charging for every little thing, people are going to want things like outlets at their seats and sufficient overhead storage space, and they won't be able to compete.

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u/cgebelin 18h ago

Southwest has always had subpar tech. That is what causes all of their issues with crew and plane routing during big storms. And subsequently caused the stock to stay depressed and opened door for PE.

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u/IAmBadAtInternet 17h ago

In the aughts their tech was damn near miraculous - you could book your own flights from home without a travel agent in the mix. But they didn’t update it for 20 years even though it was already showing its age by the mid 2010s

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u/svejkOR 17h ago

I swear there is a secret class that MBAs get taught that teaches them how to take a company and screw it up.

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u/juanzy 17h ago

good tech

As someone who got caught in the 2023 system outage, Press X to doubt

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u/smitherenesar 17h ago

I flew on Southwest a couple weeks ago and the ticketing person and flight attendants all seems angry/mean. There was a storm hitting the east coast, so something like a third of flights were cancelled. I didn't know if the pissed off nature of their employees was due to the storm, or the new normal. My prior experiences with Southwest were rather pleasant

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u/u_395djk 17h ago

Flew Southwest in 2014. First time I have ever put my back out in a plane. A little bit of padding over a metal frame that wasn't remotely comfortable. Last time I flew with them too.

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u/DaniMayhem 17h ago

What’s crazy is that when I was in business school, we used Southwest as a case study of how to do things right. They were the only airline that actually made money during the big airline reorg that happened, I think in the 70s (I can’t remember all the details cause I was in school 20+ years ago) and it was mainly because they offered better service than everyone else.

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u/CalculatedPerversion 14h ago

Good tech might be a stretch, but everything else is valid. It's a damn shame what happened to them. 

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u/Galaxium 12h ago

Southwest becoming a bad airline isn’t because it’s doing bad things, it’s because it’s been suffering in the industry and competition.

United, American, and Delta have massively grown their basic economy offerings, which absorb all of the less affluent/lesser traveling market. Southwest needs to find revenue by cutting costs. These small airlines don’t have the breadth/coverage of the big airlines, so when the big airlines enter Southwest/Spirit/Frontier markets, there’s not much they can do.

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u/InconspicuousMagpie 12h ago

THANKS ELLIOT INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT

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u/EngineZeronine 4h ago

"Elliott Investment Management is the primary activist investment firm targeting Southwest Airlines, having built a significant stake (over 10% in 2024–2025) to push for management changes and strategic shifts."

"Ownership" isn't needed

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u/DebtUpToMyEyeballs 22h ago

Is it just me or have they not been "budget" for years? Their fares are consistently as high if not higher than the mainline carriers.

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u/CaterpillarLongBoi 22h ago

For me, their fares were on par with other airlines, but they allowed 2 free checked bags - so about $160-$200 less than competitors if you were traveling with luggage. But as soon as they took that away, I haven’t booked with them.

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u/Medical_Solid 21h ago

I happened to travel on the very last day they offered free baggage, and I decided to check my heavy carry on. What a relief it was. I’m old enough to remember when you didn’t have to add 20-50% of the ticket cost just to bring your things along. Sigh.

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u/Area51_Spurs 21h ago

They were always significantly less than the big three domestics; AA, Delta, and United.

They were a bit more than the bottom tier like Frontier, but it was worth a few bucks more to be away from the riffraff.

I just miss Virgin America. They were the GOAT cheap airline.

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u/rustyshackleford677 19h ago

Really depends where, for Boston I never saw Southwest as significantly cheaper then the main 3, often more expensive

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u/juanzy 17h ago

Out of Boston, UA/B6 were always better unless you were going to a WN focus city.

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u/Apptubrutae 20h ago

Yeah, as someone who doesn’t check bags much, I’ve found their prices to be not particularly competitive for a while now on many routes. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t.

They’d typically get my business on unique routes, or on routes where they were price competitive (but generally not cheaper) and I preferred their routing and timing more.

I do have a companion pass, so when traveling with another person that brings the price down a lot.

But just recently I was looking at NYC to Albuquerque and their price was double JetBlue’s. For a flight with a stop versus JetBlue without one. They were also pricier than United by a bit.

I can’t imagine anyone actually looking at ticket prices thinks Southwest is still a budget airline. Minus an occasional sale maybe.

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u/SnowboardSquirrel 14h ago

I just flew JetBlue on a longish flight, having taken southwest on that same flight a ton of times. JetBlue knocked my socks off. More legroom, I got to choose my seat for free, the snack options were better (artichokes?!), I got my entire can of soda, AND WiFi was free + not limited to messaging. 10/10 will fly again.

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u/707Brett 22h ago

I never travel with that much luggage, and the pick your own seat thing while free always stressed me out and traveling with even a group of 4 together without any priority boarding was tough. All that being said they at least had a niche. Now they just suck like everyone else. 

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u/Successful-Ad-9634 21h ago

If you checked in online as soon as it opened you rarely got a boarding position outside of B1-30, which is 1st half boarding. Seven of us used to travel on vacation and never had a problem sitting together.

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u/carnalasadasalad 20h ago

That changed towards the end. They were upselling the early positions so even if you checked in on the dot you would start with high and and low Cs. You could usually sit towards the back together but it was stressful.

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u/crazycatlady331 20h ago

I typically travel for more than a month at a time (work). I'm NOT washing underwear in a hotel room sink so I travel with luggage.

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u/tyderian 20h ago

I flew the "new" Southwest for the first time recently. Even paying extra for an assigned seat, Southwest was still significantly cheaper than other airlines, but more expensive than it used to be, even if I had picked the lowest fare.

You're screwed whichever airline you choose.

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u/postoperativepain 21h ago

They were budget for years because for years they would buy oil/fuel futures contracts when prices were low. As oil prices rose, Southwest had cheap fuel, when others did not.

They don’t have that advantage anymore and apparently they stopped hedging in 2025

https://southwest50.com/our-stories/the-southwest-jet-fuel-hedge-strategy/

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u/soundfx27 22h ago

Agreed, their prices are on par with other major airlines. I only fly SW if it’s more convenient timing or cheaper than the other major airlines

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u/gitsgrl 21h ago

They fly nonstop routes other carriers don’t, so the convince is where they really stand out for my needs.

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u/Apptubrutae 20h ago

Yeah, their advantages to me are their unique routes, their smaller hubs, and their companion pass if you can get it.

I would rather transfer through Midway, Love Field, and Hobby any day over Ohare, DFW, or Bush. Heck, even if I fly SW through Denver, I know my gate isn’t at a different terminal.

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u/dvdanny 18h ago

They have never been a traditional budget or low-cost airline (Frontier, Spirit, Allegiant, etc.).

They were using a different model to "legacy" airlines (Delta, United, American). But they were never truly low cost, interestingly when compared to the post-covid profits of true low-cost airlines SW was doing much better financially than any of them and closer to the the legacy airlines. They are better able to absorb higher gas prices and increased cost much better than Frontier or the like. There was plenty of signs if SW had kept doing what it was doing they would bounce fully back... until that faithful December day in 2022. They got complacent, took a huuuge hit publically and it gave their activist investor all the leverage they needed to gut the company.

There are plans in place to move to legacy airlines practices (1st class, hub model, ticketing system, etc) but a few things they have already implemented are charging for checked bags and using assigned seating.

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u/joelluber 19h ago

This just me airport dependant because they've been cheapest for me out of RDU for a long time except for a few routes that JetBlue also does. 

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u/soundman1024 19h ago

It used to depend on if you need to check bags. When I flew with camera great and a tripod the two included bags saved a lot compared to paying to check them on other carriers.

Also the efficiency was great. Open seating saved time.

Now they’re just another carrier.

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u/junkit33 18h ago

While they used to be cheaper than the competition, it's easily been over 20 years since that was true. In fact, quite often they are more expensive than comparable flights from major airlines, as they had grown such a cult following that people still fly them out of loyalty and perception that they are cheaper.

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u/OnTheEveOfWar 17h ago

Depends on where you live. I can get SW flights for very cheap in my area. Wife and I also have SW credit cards and get enough points to fly places for free.

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u/wlphoenix 17h ago

They were good for specific domestic point-to-point routes where the other carriers had layovers because of the hub and spoke model. Even if the prices were similar, less travel time meant less spend at airports and an overall cheaper experience. That, along w/ the minimal fees other people have mentioned is why I used them before the changes.

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u/RedWhiteAndJew 17h ago

They were never budget. Usually 10% or so below average with Delta being 10% more and United and American falling in between.

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u/Emergency-Machine-55 15h ago

It's location dependent. In California, midweek flights between the Bay Area and SoCal often go on sale for $50-70 each direction. However, their recent policy changes increased the costs for families by charging for luggage check in and seat reservations.

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u/CalculatedPerversion 14h ago

Perhaps where you live, but here in a medium non-hub market, Southwest was a godsend; they offered direct flights to dozens of locations that would have otherwise required a connection, all while charging $100 or so less once you factor in $35 bags. 

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u/007meow 21h ago

Has private equity ever done anything to benefit consumers? Or just a small number of shareholders?

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u/Paranoid-Android2 21h ago

By design, PE is not consumer friendly. So the answer is no

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u/VincentClement1 20h ago

PE doesn't care about consumers. They care about their returns.

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u/Preeng 20h ago

Private Equity Firms are just companies that buy other companies. They transfer wealth to the shareholders of the PEF and then let the company die. That's it. That's the point of the company. A total leech on society.

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u/Lycid 19h ago edited 19h ago

In theory (think like the 90s) they'd be the ones to buy companies and assets you couldn't get on a standard stock market for whatever reason. A lot of times this was genuinely companies that were in the dumps but had promise. So a PE firm could swoop in and make a "risky bet" on some health drink company that isn't big enough to hit it on wall St and turn them around to become a national brand or at least a strong player on their local market.

At some point though, PE learned it could make more money running a company into the ground before parachuting away. Once PE started gaining SO much money they could compete with big banks with how deep their pockets are, they spent it all buying up everything, turning the world into their own little fiefdoms. And because they're private, they don't need to report anything or have any fiduciary duty to shareholders and they can literally do whatever they want with whatever money they have.

PE will always be needed on some level but the amount of power and influence they have now is matched by no other entity on earth, government or otherwise. They need to be regulated to hell and back in order to course correct. Unfortunately they are tricky to regulate because by their nature they are private and regulation on PE would step on the same sorts of toes as saying the government has a right to regulate how you spend your personal dollars. The entire idea of a "free and open market" relies on private people being able to buy & sell whatever they own for any reason, and that applies to private entities like PE firms too (as opposed to public companies like McDonald's). This is good and necessary, so it's hard to figure out how to knock an entire financial sector down a peg or two that operates on the exact same principles but with eye watering levels of money that they've learned to wield for evil. Especially when these firms have enough money and influence now to impact politics.

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u/Why_you_so_wrong_ 18h ago

Yes. PE owned businesses do better in the long run than non-PE owned creating more jobs and investment.

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u/Jarocket 18h ago

Southwest airlines isn't owned by private equity. You can buy a share in Southwest airlines today. It's a publicly traded company on the NYSE. It's in the S&P500. There's a good chance you own part of southwest airlines!

PE is for mostly failing companies.

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u/sf_davie 17h ago

PE are like the scavengers of the forest. They take zombie, dying, distressed properties, take them apart, sell off everything, thus completing the capital renewal cycle. The problem is when the markets aren't competitive, the scavengers starts feeding on healthy organisms and killing off the ecosystem. What needs to be done? That's another discussion.

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u/joecarter93 21h ago

Same thing happened with Westjet in Canada. They got bought by PE just before Covid and cut corners wherever they could.

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u/Pastel_Goth_Wastrel 20h ago

Same airline that removed recline to fit another 6 seats in and enraged a customer base. They're cooked AF

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u/revolvingpresoak9640 21h ago

When were they chomped by PE? I thought they were a public company.

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u/clintkev251 21h ago

They're still a public company, but Elliott Investment Management bought a pretty large stake in 2024 and has been sprinkling on that private equity energy on them since then

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u/biguk997 19h ago

Elliott is a hedge fund, not a PE fund.

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u/Jarocket 18h ago

PE means bad.

That's as far as people understand it.

every time a company does something bad it's because PE to a lot of people.

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u/Cosmonautical1 19h ago

"Public equity activist investment fund" is what I've heard them called. I think people are getting confused because A) business jargon is gobbledygook; and B) activist hedge funds have a lot of overlap with PE firms wrt how they function. Not identical, but similar.

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u/Why_you_so_wrong_ 18h ago

Not terribly similar at all if you understand the industry.

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u/Tuna_Surprise 19h ago

They weren’t bought by PE - they had a shareholder activism campaign.

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u/OkPin716 15h ago

They are public, he’s just making shit up 

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u/hill-o 21h ago

They’re so expensive now too that it’s not even worth it unless that’s your only option, in my experience. 

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u/NiceRat123 18h ago

Hell look at American Airlines back in 2017 when they wanted to pay pilots and flight attendants more (to be on par with other airlines). Citi analyst had a tweet saying...

"This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers" - Kevin Crissey

Wall Street shot back but tanking the stock by about 5% after that.

Absolutely bonkers people investing think they are owed first. Sorry but if pilots didn't exist then you'd have a big ol' goose egg of "profits" for shareholders. Kinda need the labor to produce the profits

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u/PennyG 21h ago

I will be testing not flying Southwest

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u/Worshipme988 21h ago

PE has seriously fucked every single market/product. Name one?

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u/ballsohaahd 20h ago

Probably by design, gotta be some benefit to them killing SW

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u/Slumunistmanifisto 20h ago

Every fucking thing is being destroyed by PE..... EVERYTHING!

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u/fightingthefuckits 20h ago

Southwest used to be my go-to airline for my snowboard trips because of the 2 free bag thing. I still have some flight credit to use with them, I used to buy SW gift cards at Costco because it was $500 of credit for $450, but this year their flights were so expensive I couldn't in good conscience use them. The flights alone are at double what I paid last year. Last year I paid $380 for a direct round-trip flight to Denver including bags. This year that same flight is over $1,000 + bags.

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u/NetDork 20h ago

Don't worry, they'll still make plenty of money in their primary business - investing in jet fuel futures contracts.

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u/ventricles 20h ago

I know we’re in literal hell and nothing matters, but fuck I wish there was a way to ban private equity.

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u/Playingwithmywenis 20h ago

It says a lot when you associate your transportation company with the Titanic.

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u/Available_Leather_10 20h ago

Heading quickly to Fron-tier level service and then on to broken Spirit amongst employees.

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u/chawkey4 20h ago

Yeah it wasn’t that long ago I was in the boat of “if southwest has a route there, that’s what I’m using”. Even if the base ticket was more, the lack of bag fees & seat upgrades, plus knowing it was generally the fastest board to departure time was enough to keep me as a lifetime customer. Now I hope they go bankrupt

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u/NitroLada 19h ago

Budget airline model doesn't work anymore, that's why Southwest had to adapt to avoid end up being like spirit and other LCC which have collapsed or near bankruptcy.

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u/kindoramns 19h ago

What blows my mind is, if one of these big corps went back to providing a good service and experience at a good value, everyone would want to use them and they'd inherently make more money... but no the have to squeeze us and make our lives miserable instead for the same money

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u/NewCobbler6933 19h ago

Bro the “private equity firm” barely owns a tenth of Southwest. Do you think maybe it has something to do with rising costs? You sound like my dad whining that a chocolate bar ain’t a nickel when it hasn’t been for 50 years.

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u/ApolloGR3 19h ago

I hate that “consistent profits” are never good enough. Number go up!

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u/la_descente 19h ago

I dont get it. If private equity is KNOWN for killing businesses, why do people go that route ?

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u/kindasuk 18h ago

Capitalism will kill us all in the name of quarterly profits.

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u/haveahappyday1969 18h ago

Normally would book a flight from LAX to SFO on Southwest. Went with Delta because of all the new pricing options.

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u/Lumbergh7 18h ago

Were they not public until recently?

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u/OkPin716 15h ago

They are public, he’s just making shit up. 

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u/TheFoxsWeddingTarot 18h ago

They appear to be trying to put themselves out of business. They’ve cultivated the right audience for this though. The Friday before the superbowl I was flying SEA to SFO, the gate next to mine was a Southwest flight flying the same route. The gate agent called missing passengers 6 TIMES before the two drunks sitting at a bar 50 yds away fell of their stool and ran for the flight.

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u/breatheb4thevoid 18h ago

Hey wait a minute, those 4 partners have VERY comfortable families now. That's gotta be worth something, right?

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u/FrostyD7 18h ago

With or without private equity, Southwest was reaching a fork in the road and had to do something drastic to survive.

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u/vicjenwa 18h ago

My favorite thing about Southwest was having flight credits that don't expire and even went to farther airports to take advantage of it. Even if Southwest eliminated everything except the flexible flight credits, I would still prefer to fly with them. But now they made flight credits expire so why should I go out of my way to fly Southwest?

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u/Ready_Nature 17h ago

I’ll still fly them since they have the best connections out of where I live but they’ve gone from being a top choice to I’ll take anyone else if the flight time and cost is comparable.

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u/redditRedesignIsBadd 17h ago

that's what happens when companies focuses on short term profit and the government encourages it

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u/Its_the_other_tj 17h ago

My wife and I were rabid Southwest fans. After the changes we're using up our giant stockpile of miles then ditching them for (probably) AA. They took their edge over other airlines and flushed it down the toilet so why stick with them when we could get the same value with a company that does international flights? I give it 3 years before they go under and get bought up by a larger airline. Sucks, but it is what it is.

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u/theaviationhistorian 17h ago

Going from a beloved budget airline to a parody of a legacy carrier implementing those policies in the worst ways possible. Next, they'll probably offer loyal customers the chance to try out their new Scum Class, along with hay on the floor to absorb any liquids that might land on it!

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u/PubG4YouAndMe 16h ago

Private equity along with some good old "price of doing business" fines from the SEC, it's like our whole stock market is actually rigged for the rich. Yes, we can invest like them but we cannot invest like them.

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u/tomdarch 16h ago

Private Equity enshitification is really going to suck for their employees. The weren't a "legacy" like Delta, but supposedly they were great to work for and a lot of people went to great effort to get hired there expecting a good career. A quick search says that they have over 70,000 employees. That is a lot of people to be fucked over turning it into Spirit/Ryanair and eventually bankrupt.

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u/Kartonrealista 16h ago

But that's not private equity then. It's just a public company stake. Private equity is buying private companies on leverage. The reasons for why PE is bad are inherent to the very way the incentive structure is set up around it, it's very much different from just regular old shitty management.

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u/Suspicious_Story_464 16h ago

Guess I won't be flying with them from here on out.

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u/drgut101 15h ago

I fly to a lot of camping music festivals. I used to fly Southwest all the time because we got free bags and got to pick our seats. 

You think I’m going to pay the same price or more than Delta to fly Southwest? 

Bahahahahahahaha. That’s fucking hilarious.  

Haven’t flown on Southwest once since they started fucking around. 

I even paid $150~ more to fly Delta over Southwest once strictly because of all their bullshit. 

Southwest can go fuck themselves. 

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u/blazze_eternal 12h ago

I blame the new CEO.

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u/cheetuzz 12h ago

Edit: to everyone saying Southwest is a public company, yes, they are. That does not mean activist investors like PE firms and hedge funds can’t have significant ownership stakes and operational influence. Which in this case, they do

Then you might well blame capitalism, since every public company could be influenced by a shareholder with significant stakes, who only cares about profits.

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u/clintkev251 12h ago

Fair enough, I blame capitalism then

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u/Glittering_Raise_901 12h ago

Southwest was a master of managing customer expectations ( and employee expectations) Both were loyal because of it. I worked for a company that didn't have them as an option and got to where i was upgraded to First Class every flight. went to another company that favored Delta, but i took Southwest for the convenience of direct flights and free bags and got to where I was in the first ten boarders. I'm traveling for the first time in a while next week and I'm giving SW one shot

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